Biden poised for big wins in Congress

Republicans Embrace Violence

 

On the campaign trail, many Republicans talk of violence

By David Weigel in the WaPost

Tony Castro-Mantle:The Best There Ever Was - Notes

Not a straight-forward biography, this book I would call a psychological profile of the great Mickey Mantle, certainly the most famous baseball player of the 50's and 60's.  The book is stirring, poignant, and full of interesting details.  The author knows his man.

Casey Stengel originally called him Mickey "Mantles."  No one knew why except that maybe it was Stengelese.  P. 59

Mantle came to the Yankees as a shortstop but he was a liability at that position.  Stengel committed to transitioning him to the outfield.  P. 60

Why did Mantle become such an icon.  It's Darwinian says Tom Wolfe.  He said that God is dead.  He meant it as a warming.  Who will take his place?  Who or what will fill the void?  Shamans, faith peddlers, mindless entertainment.  You gotta have some new Christ to believe in.  Why not Mickey Mantle?  P. 126

Mickey's standard opening story when he was speaking was his cow story.  He and Billy Martin had new rifles and wanted to try them out hunting deer.   Mickey knew a doctor who had a place around San Antonio.  With Billy still in the car the doctor says they can hunt on his property but first he tells Mickey that he has mule who is old and needs putting down.  Mickey decides to play a joke on Billy, tells him the doctor is mean and won't let them hunt so Mickey tells Billy  he is going to shoot thee doctor's mule.  So he goes to the barm BLAM down goes the mule.  All of a sudden BLAM BLAM BLAM!  Billy comes running says I just shot three of his cows for good measure.

Mickey asked Paul Simon why he didn't use his name in "Mrs. Robinson"rather than Joe DiMaggio and Simon explained it was a matter of the syllables of Mickey Mantle's not being right.  P. 139

Wrote Talese?  P. 140

Mickey Mantle's rise to fame was so improbable that he saw it as divinely ordained; the friend who suggested he might become a great ballplayer but nothing more; the doctor who intervened and who saved his leg from amputation with a miracle drug; and the actress he met in his rookie season and regretted not having married and told him he reminded her of King Arthur.

He had a passion for golf.

Mickey could play the game, but he knew he wasn't smart enough to manage.  P. 148

Joe DiMaggio could sit in the clubhouse for hours and not speak to anyone.  P. 179

Mickey didn't know what to do in retirement.  Do any of us?

"I didn't know I raised a coward."  Mutt Mantle to Mickey when Mickey talked about quitting baseball and returning to Oklahoma.

Casey had trouble managing Mantle because he couldn't reach him.

Nellie Fox said that on two legs Mantle would have been the greatest ever.

Mantle led the American League in strikeouts five times.  P. 197

Some say that Mickey was the son that Casey Stengel never had.  If so, he was a difficult child for the Case.  Mickey did no rehab when he needed to or keep himself in shape like he should have.  Must have  old Case in perpetual turmoil.

His long marriage with 4 sons  to Merlyn yet a long-term relationship with Holly Brooke are unexplainable.

At a Mickey Mantle Day in 1965 DiMaggio was there but so was Sen. Robert Kennedy.  DiMaggio avoided shaking the senator's hand since he hated the Kennedys over Marilyn with whom he was married for nine months in 1954.   

The author is from Waco where he and Mickey played golf.  Amusing to hear him talk about driving up and down what ultimately became I-35 between Dallas and Waco.

Great stories of Billy shooting the cows and Mickey hitting a homer hung over.    

It is disappointing that the author does not talk about 1961.

One big factor in the Mantle Cult is that Mickey was white, very white.  Mickey said that Hank Aaron was thee best he ever saw.  No real mention of Mickey and Willie.  They were compared in the 50's and 60's.  Race was a factor in Mickey's favor.

Mutt Mantle was hard, domineering father.  It amazes me how he drilled his son into being a switch-hitter.  Mickey always wanted to please his father and could never stand up to him.  The impression of this reader is that he married his childhood sweetheart Merlyn rather than his true love Holly because this is what his father wanted.

The author refers to Harry Truman as a "caretaker president."  How silly, Mr. Castro.

Upon being told that he is a writer, Yogi asks Ernest Hemingway, "What paper are you with?"

How good could Mickey Mantle have been if he had taken better care of himself?  We will never know.  This was once a hotly debated subject, not so much I assume now unless amongst aged baseball fans.  The Mantle name will never equal that of Babe Ruth.  Just how good could Mickey Mantle have been if he had stayed healthy?  That question has been debated forever.  My point is that as time moves on the question will be less and less discussed except for old-time baseball purists.

Is Mantle's combination of power and speed unmatched?

The author makes the case that 1957 was his best year and maybe the best year ever in the modern era.  His onbase pct. was an astounding .512

Check out John Thorn and his new way looking at baseball statistics.

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Tony Castro - Gehrig and the Babe - Notes

Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth are the most storied baseball teammates in baseball history.  Ruth came to the Yankees first followed by Gehrig who had attended Columbia University.  I can't tell from this book whether Gehrig actually graduated from Columbia.

Whereas Ruth was larger than life, Gehrig was the quiet one who played ball but did not attract attention off the field.  In the language of the time, the Babe was colorful.  Lou was boring. 

They were Yankee teammates from 1923 to 1934.

The Babe made fun of the Gary Cooper film Pride of the Yankees.  They had to film Cooper hitting right-handed and by trick photography make him appear to be batting left-handed.  The Babe didn't understand movie making.  Gehrig's own Tarzen movie appearance was an embarassment.

The Babe's hero was Shoeless Joe Jackson.  He imitated Jackson's pigeon-toed batting stance.  Even though he was acquitted at trail, Jackson's. lifetime  ban from baseball was never lifted by Judge Landis.  The Babe helped save baseball after the Black Sox Scandal.

The lazy Babe called everyone "keed."

The author apparently believes that the Babe did call his shot in that famous '32 Series game.

The author can come to no firm conllusiions on th 5-yr feud.  When the Babe famously greeted Lou on Lou Gehrig Day at the Stadium in July of 1939 it was the first time they had seen each other in five years.  Elinor and the Babe knew each other before she and Lou wed.  There was the question of what happened on the Japanese trip.  Then there was Eleanor who ran Lou's life and Lou's excessive devotion to his mother.  Who knows for sure.

Gehrig was known for his power at the plate.  He had a habit, not mentioned in this book, of dropping his right front kneee to the ground in his swing.  I do not understand how a power hitter could do that and still hit the ball hard.

Late in his career Gehrig was consumed with maintaining his consecutive game streak though he did not get as much recognition for it as he would have liked.  Ruth even criticized him for it saying he would be better off physically to take a day off now and then.  By the rules Gehrig could play just one inning and get credit for a streak continuation.  He was criticized, rightly or wrongly, for taking advantage of this rule.  This might have been a part of their 5 yr. estrangement.

Gehrig never earned near the kind of money that the Babe made.  I think the Yankees did not treat him right financially.  He had financial difficulties at the end of his life.  He knew he was dying but had to hide it from the Yankees hoping they would give him a front-office job, but they never did.  The Gehrigs lost their house before he died.

The  Babe desperately wanted to manage the Yankees but the Yankees were never interested.  He was shunted to the lowly Boston Braves after the Yankees ran him off.  A sad end to his baseball career.

The Republican Party in Revolutionary Mode

 Today's Republican Party is in revolutionary mode. They are escalating their more than 50 years-long campaign to take away the human and civil rights of women, non-whites, the LGBTQ community, the disabled, the poor and others deemed to be the enemy in their "real America."

As the country becomes more racially diverse, younger, forward thinking and pluralistic, the American right wing is attempting to force the country back to the 19th century and the Gilded Age. Such moves are generally unpopular with the American people en masse. The Republican Party and the larger right wing movement dismiss such protests because they reject the basic principle of a true "We the People" democracy and are earnestly working to create a herrenvolk, apartheid, plutocratic, Christian fascist new America that will be ruled by a small number of white men and their allies.

As seen on Jan. 6 with Trump's coup attempt and the terrorist attack on the Capitol by his followers, such political violence will become the norm as the Republican-fascists expand and consolidate their power and target the Democratic Party (and liberals and progressives more generally) as illegitimate.

How have Joe Biden and the Democrats and the so-called "resistance" responded to this assault on American democracy and society? They have been largely uncoordinated, hapless, lacking the urgency of now, and in total failing to rise to the challenge and demands of the crisis.

In so many ways, Biden and the Democrats remain beholden to — and therefore hamstrung by — a type of American politics and its faith in centrism, bipartisanship and institutions that no longer exists in the Age of Trump and ascendant fascism. This means that the Democratic Party's (and the larger pro-democracy's forces) plans and strategies and norms are of little use in this fight. Democrats are also being held back by self-inflicted injuries such as infighting about President Joe Biden's leadership (or lack thereof), horrible messaging and Vichy Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin who consistently sabotage the party's agenda.

-Chauncey Devega in Salon.com

 

They say it's never too late to do something meaningful with your life, which is a nice thought, but I think I'm only gonna give it about 9 more days and if nothing changes I'll forget about it and keep doing what I'm doing.  No need to be a fool about it.

 I'd rather be alone than be with people I do not wish to be with.

I'd rather see the forest than get bogged down in the trees.

I prefer silence rather than noise just for the sake of noise.

I'd rather see clearly what is right in front of me than the glory that might lie in the distance.

No need to get it to go. It's now or never.